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Standardized Billing Rates

Does anyone use standardized rates based on the task being performed (ie: Production artist $110/hr) regardless of cost (salary, benefits, etc) to the studio?

Or does each employee have a different rate? If that is the case, how do you have standardized task codes (ie: task PRD is for Production no matter who is performing the task)

Jonathan Gundlach Hanson Dodge

We have billing rates based upon the staff person, not task based. We have about 35 staff members. Our task list for internal time (fees) is as follows:

Research & Strategic Planning Account Management Account Direction Copywriting Art Direction Creative Direction Logistics Management Logistics Production Art/Keyline Production Management Production Assistance

If a copywriter is functioning as the art director, they still use the copywriting task code. This task code system is easy when estimating hours for new jobs, also when checking estimated vs. actuals. It's easy to see if one staff member is continually over budget on hours. All staff members must add a description when inputting their timesheet. The only difficulty we've found is when using the Scheduling portion of C&P.

Laura Karns Hanon McKendry

In our case, each person has his/her own billing rate, regardless of the task they are performing. We use task codes on timesheets so we can tell if we are estimating the correct amount of time each task should take on a job. Also, the task items are what show up on the invoice, of course.

There is a preference in C&P to force the system to bill from staff rates, not task rates. The way I understand it, you can also have different rates for different clients, but we haven't tried that.

Catherine Colangelo The Phillips Agency

We use rates based on employee cost. And you just enter a billing rate per person and bill by staff rate and not task rate.

Cara Filipiak Veritas Advertising

We have used both methods of setting sell rates. At first we set a different sell rate per task per employee. This is facilitated by setting your Accounting Preference to use "Staff Billing Rates". Our logic was to maintain a set margin amount on each task. If on a job a less expensive employee was used then the client would benefit from that. On the other hand more expensive employees pushed the price up. This was not too much of a problem until we started to use the job estimating feature. So now we have switched to a uniform sell rate for each task. The change over was easy. A Bill Rate is entered in the task table for each applicable task. Make sure that you click on "Update Existing Job Tasks". Then Accounting Preferences is changed to "Task Billing Rates"

Ward Lindsey Cooper & Williamson Inc.